It's a day for aces. Not only do Sale and Santana have some pretty crazy numbers thus far, the Rochester Red Wings will be sending out their young ace, Jose Berrios, barring any weather concerns. That AAA game might have more bearing on the Twins' season than their own game as a good start by Berrios could very well convince the Twins that he should be the pitcher called up to replace Kyle Gibson in the rotation.
As for the game in Minneapolis, hopefully the Twins can continue to pound Sale like they did in his recent outings when he was in a White Sox uniform.
ERA and whatever, but still:
According to STATS, it's the fourth matchup since the mounds were lowered in 1969 that involves starting pitchers with at least six starts and an ERA under 1.40.
I'm being a one of those days vibe, again.
5 K's through two innings.
20 K is in play.
Ervin Santana gave up runs. What's up with that?
Gordo'd.
Jose Berrios gave up a run in the first and that's it. Six innings, one run, five hits, no walks, four strikeouts. He's at 90 pitches, so I'm guessing he's done, although they might use him in the seventh.
Berrios did start the seventh, retiring two more batters and giving up one more hit. So, 6.2 innings, one run, six hits, no walks, four strikeouts. 96 pitches.
Since Joe Mauer's HR, the Twins have scored 1 run.
now 2!
On the board!
Tied game!
Baseball is such a tremendous game. Sale was completely dominating the Twins until, all of a sudden, he wasn't.
The hardest hit balls that inning were the two Sac Flys, yet 4 on the board.
After the boys tie it up, a four-pitch walk is less than optimal.
Nice play by Sano and Vargas!
bugger
Well, shoot.
Duffy with one out and Taylor Rogers is already up in the pen?
Before that double play I was afraid we might have to use our ace reliever, Chris Gimenez, again. I'm not sure if he can pitch in back-to-back games, though.
VARGAS!!!!!
KENNYS!
If Vargas can actually hit with power consistently, he and Sano could provide a pretty darn good one-two punch.
He has always hit with power consistently.
Not really, no. Not in the majors, anyway.
ISO by year
182
109
270
226
Not Sano level, but with the exception of 2015, that looks like power to me.
2015 is a big exception, of course. My main point, though, is that within those years he's been pretty streaky. A lot of power hitters are, of course, especially younger ones. My hope is that he can make the valleys shorter and shallower.
Not sure about consistency, but for his career, Vargas' HR percentage, XB hit percentage and ABs per home run are all better than major league average. In 2015, his power numbers were all about average, but his other three seasons were well above average.
Mauer was called out on ball 4
Joe don't get the calls like he used to
That's why I look forward to when we can get balls and strikes called with technology. One bad strike call in a key spot can completely change the game.
Thats game.
Can Gimenez pitch to himself?
Looks like we need to find out if Gimenez can pitch on back-to-back days after all.
Here we are again about how the Twins were "forced" to activate Haley earlier than they wanted to because they were desperate for a fresh arm in the bullpen. There's nothing I can say about it that I haven't said several times before, but if a manager can't scrape by with eight relief pitchers, he's doing a lousy job of managing his bullpen.
If Sale was on the Twins, there's no way he would have pitched the sixth today. Santana came out after 93 pitches today. Santiago came out after 87 pitches the other day. That's my biggest beef. I understand playing matchup with the bullpen. That's the way it's done these days, especially when you don't have any dominant arms. Why you pull your best starters before 100 pitches before an inning even starts, I don't get.
I agree on the starters, but the number of relief pitchers used isn't all about matchups. There was no real reason to pull Duffey after one inning and fifteen pitches. There was no real reason to pull Pressly after two-thirds of an inning and nine pitches (unless Molitor thought he couldn't get the job done, in which case why bring him in to start with?). If you're going to use relievers for one inning or less, you're going to end up using four, five, and six relief pitchers an awful lot, and that doesn't make sense. You simply can't manage every game like it's the seventh game of the World Series. You have to remember that there's another game tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.
2 of the first 3 batters that Taylor faced were lefty, so I assume that is why he was brought in instead of leaving Duffey in. Pressly then came in to face righties. This was Pressly's 3rd outing in 4 days, so he wasn't going to be out there for very long but was asked to get out of an inning. The Indians have done this kind of matchup with relievers with a lot of success the last few years, so I wonder if Falvey is encouraging Molitor in this area.
If so, that would make me a lot less hopeful about Falvey. Again, you just can't do this sort of thing every day. We're seeing what happens when you do--you routinely burn up four or five relievers a game and no matter how many guys you have in the bullpen, it's never enough.
This is the inning that never ends. Yes it goes on and on my friends...
Some good news: Rochester, Fort Myers, and Cedar Rapids all won today. Chattanooga won the first game of their doubleheader and are tied in the sixth inning of the second game.
Red Sox hadn't scored 10 runs in a game all season until yesterday. Now they score 10 runs in an inning.
Eddie Guardado better lace up the spikes, he's coming in next!
In a game like this, when telling us that Joe Kelley was coming into the game, John Gordon would always solemnly intone "This is not a save situation."
Red Sox come 1 run shy of record for most runs scored by an opponent at Target Field. A's scored 18 on 9/11/13.
So I guess abandoning this game to do some landscaping and gardening was a good idea, eh?
It certainly was for me, at least until I ran into roots.
Molitor does not yet understand the groundskeeper duties. Duffy can certainly at least get through the lineup once, regardless of a couple lefties starting out the inning. Silly.